


far more generous than deserved

by astarisms



Category: The Daevabad Trilogy - S. A. Chakraborty
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Shannon’s been tweeting about a fucked up angsty almost kiss lately, Violence, and Anna Maria was like hey what if this fucked up kiss was this fucked up thing, and I said what is your problem shut up I’ll kill you, and today was her birthday so I wrote it for her, because I am the worst friend, happy birthday Anna Maria love u, set during the Empire of Gold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 22:09:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19876861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astarisms/pseuds/astarisms
Summary: She wishes there were another way. Any other way. But the gods are not kind and this needs to be done.She is the only one who can.





	far more generous than deserved

Nahri’s hands shake.

She tightens her grip on the dagger she holds — _his_ dagger — though it doesn’t help much. Her palms are sweating and her fingers ache from how tight her grip is but it feels like it’s going to slip from her grasp, anyways.

She almost lets it. She wants to drop it, to fling it away, _anything_ but _this_. 

The tip meets resistance when she presses it over his lungs, and she draws in a shuddering breath, dropping her head to rest against his. 

“I can’t,” she says quietly, a sob building in her throat. Warm fingers close over her trembling ones, steady and sure. 

“Nahri.” The grief in Dara’s voice nearly undoes her, made worse by the fact that she knows it’s not for his fate, but rather for hers. Because it had to be her to plunge the dagger into his chest. 

Because it had to be her to kill him.

“I’m sorry,” he says, though it sounds more like a plea, and she hates it. “I wish there were another way. I wish it didn’t have to be you.”

She squeezes her eyes shut against the bright green glow of his, and he reaches up to cup her face with his free hand. His thumb sweeps over her cheekbone as she tries to steady herself.

“If it’s any consolation,” he murmurs, and Nahri resents him for being so calm, “I do not fear death. Twice I was slain and twice it was at the hands of those who had no qualms about my death.”

Nahri flinches at the reminder, the stolen memory of him drowning under the taunts of the ifrit and that of Ali, who had been under possession of the marid but had all but delivered Dara’s head to his father, anyways. 

“This is supposed to help?” she asks, and she can’t hide how her voice shakes, as unsteady as the hand he holds. She opens her eyes again, his face blurry before she blinks the tears away and he comes back into focus. 

He laughs, and it is both warm and humorless at the same time.

“It is nice,” he admits finally, “to die at the hands of someone who cares for me. Someone who will mourn me. I have lived so long in solitude and disgrace, I thought that surely the only people who would notice me gone were the ones who would be inconvenienced by my passing.” 

He sighs wistfully, and Nahri aches at the words, the reminder of how he’d spent his many years — a weapon only, irreplaceable and yet dispensable. 

“That you’re here now… you, the only one who knows my heart… it is a far more generous death than I deserve,” he finishes quietly. The sob is torn from Nahri’s throat, and she drops to her knees before him.

“I can’t,” she moans, desperate and anguished. 

He pushes away her curls from where they cling to her damp cheeks. “You must. The future of Daevabad depends on it. The future of the djinn depends on it.” 

Hearing him speak the word so softly, the word he’d all but spat all those years ago, only made matters worse. With her free hand she reaches around, gripping the back of his neck, twisting her fingers in his hair.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that he had changed, had worked so hard to unlearn his prejudices, to do the right thing, only for his journey to end here.

With his own dagger pressed against his chest by a hand that couldn’t even drive it forward decisively. 

“I meant it, you know.” Nahri looks at him hopelessly, and resents how calm he seems. He looks more peaceful than she’s ever seen him, untroubled by the prospect of dying — really, truly dying. “When I said I’d never had anything like you. No one but you saw this man. Not even I could find him, after a time.”

“Dara…”

He smiles, and if she wasn’t already on her knees she thinks that charming curve of his lips would have sent her to them. She tries to commit it to memory. 

“I know our time together was relatively short, in the grand scheme of things, but Nahri… you are, without doubt, the best thing to happen to me.” 

Her eyes burn again, her vision clouding with more tears. 

“Shut up, Dara,” she whispers, her voice breaking with the weight of her task, and closes the distance between them. He tilts his head up to meet her lips, and she leans into it, pushing the dagger tipped with her blood past flesh and muscle and bone, until it embeds itself in his lungs. 

To his credit, he doesn’t make a sound, but she feels the moment the life drains out of him and his hands slip from her hand and face. The illusion of his daeva body dissolves, leaving an unfamiliar husk in its place. 

Nahri can almost convince herself it isn’t him, if it weren’t for the grief enveloping her and the brand he’d left on her skin, an invisible mark no one else could bestow upon her. 

Her jaw trembles with the effort not to cry, but the sight of him still on the ground, the warm, black blood coating her hand, and the knowledge that she had just killed the man she loves are too much. 

She wants to throw herself over his body and sob. She wants to vomit. She wants to rip the dagger from his chest and plunge it into her own. 

She does none of these. Instead, she closes his eyes with shaking fingers. She arranges his body carefully, murmuring prayers over him. She retrieves the dagger from his chest, wipes the blood on her pant leg, and sheaths it at her waist once more.

Then she allows herself only a moment to grieve, because she knows if she allows for anymore, it will break her. She will not have the strength to carry on.

She kneels by him, resting a hand on the top of his head. She leans down to place a lingering kiss on his forehead, because it’s all she can do now.

“Rest,” she murmurs to the empty air, though the wind suddenly blows when she does, ruffling her hair. She doesn’t allow herself to consider what it means. 

She stands, and holds her hand out before her.

“Naar,” she whispers, and then tosses the flame that appears onto his body. She doesn’t stay to watch it burn. She will have centuries to mourn, when all is said and done. 

But right now, she has a city to save.


End file.
